The corridor leading to the sealed room was colder than the rest of the manor, as if Lucian’s magic had seeped into every stone, every shadow.
Lucian and Auren stood before the reinforced door, Sebastian’s seal still glowing faintly at its edges. On the other side, Elyndra lingered inside Seraphina’s body, a threat neither of them could afford to mishandle.
Auren reached for the door first, fingers brushing the silver knob but Lucian’s hand shot out, stopping him by the arm.
Auren turned slightly, eyebrows lifting in question.
Lucian’s expression wasn’t cold this ti. It wasn’t furious. It was sothing far more fragile, so tightly restrained it almost didn’t look like him.
"I really hope you can pull her out..." he said, voice low and rough, the words scraping against the ache in his chest. "I really hope... you bring her back to ."
His hand tightened unconsciously on Auren’s arm, not with anger or warning, but with sothing close to desperation.
Auren held his gaze steadily, his own voice softening, "I will try everything I can, Lucian."
The air between them shifted, both n understanding the weight of what they were about to face.
Auren placed his palm over Lucian’s hand briefly, a rare gesture of reassurance.
"And listen," he added, gentle but firm. "Whatever happens in that room... rember she is still there. Seraphina hasn’t disappeared. Elyndra only locked her away. Your wife is fighting... so let us fight for her too."
Lucian turned his face away for a mont, jaw clenching, breath unsteady.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
Auren gave him a calm, confident smile before turning back to the door.
This ti, when his hand closed around the knob, Lucian didn’t stop him.
A faint crackle of magic traveled up Auren’s fingers, reacting to the seal, to Elyndra’s presence, to the faint echo of Seraphina buried deep within.
He inhaled once.
Then he pushed the door open.
The mont he entered the room, Auren walked a few steps inside deliberately, letting the magic settle around him. The air felt different here, heavier, like a storm that hadn’t decided whether to break or hold.
He spotted her imdiately.
Seraphina or rather, the woman wearing her.
She stood near the tall window, her hands clasped loosely behind her back as she gazed outside. Sunlight frad her silhouette, softening the edges of a body he knew wasn’t hers... but the stance was wrong. The energy was wrong. Everything about the posture made the hairs on his arms rise.
She turned at the sound of his steps.
And their eyes t.
Auren’s breath caught. Not because she looked like Celeste but because for a heartbeat, his heart almost betrayed him.
The sa half-smile she used to give him to keep tempting him to co back to see her near the lake, "My lord..."
She took another step, closing the distance with a shy tilt of her head that wasn’t shy at all.
"You never visited again after what happened at the lake," she said softly. "And now... here you are. Did you finally realize your feelings?"
Auren didn’t respond.
He simply watched her, calm as ever, but there was a tension in the air, barely noticeable, buried deep.
Elyndra mistook that silence for hesitation. For longing.
She lifted her hands and placed Seraphina’s palms gently on his chest. Her touch was warm. She leaned closer, tiptoeing as her body brushed against his, as if the mont already belonged to them.
"You don’t have to pretend anymore," she whispered. "Whatever I did back then... I did it because I loved you. And I know you feel the sa, right, my lord?"
Her fingers traced up his shoulders, sliding toward his neck. Her face angled toward his, slow and deliberate, almost brushing against his jaw. His breath caught, not because of her, but because of the face she was using.
Seraphina’s face.
The one he wasn’t supposed to see like this.
’Ah. Damn it.’ Auren cursed silently on his mind as he tilted his chin up and stared at the ceiling instead of her. ’Anything—anything—but eting those eyes.’
Elyndra took that tiny hesitation as encouragent.
She rose higher on her toes, chest pressed against him, breath brushing the curve of his jaw this ti.
"My lord..." she murmured, voice warm and coaxing, her lips dangerously close to the sensitive skin of his neck.
Auren’s eyes shut tight, not in surrender but in restraint. A quiet inhale moved through him as he tried to steady the storm in his own head. Her warmth, her height, her closeness... all of it felt wrong and too familiar at the sa ti.
He forced his thoughts into a single line.
’This is not her. This is not Seraphina.’
His hand, still hovered behind Seraphina’s borrowed body, shifted subtly. Two fingers flicked outward, the motion small enough that Elyndra didn’t notice a thing, and a single feather slipped free from his touch. It dissolved almost instantly, unraveling into a thin curl of silver light that vanished into the air without a sound.
He kept his voice inside his mind, firm and steady as steel.
’This is not the ti to waver.’ Auren forced everything else aside.
Elyndra’s hands gripping him, the warmth of her breath brushing the side of his neck, the forced intimacy she tried to wrap around him until only the mory of Seraphina remained at the center of his focus. He clung to that mory and let it guide him deeper into the quiet ripple of magic left behind by the feather, searching for sothing pure and unmistakably hers. Not Elyndra’s voice, not her false affection, not the warmth she borrowed from another soul but the faintest trace of the woman trapped underneath.
He closed his eyes, breathing in slowly as he followed the faint tug of instinct. The world narrowed to that single thread. Everything else faded into background noise. Elyndra’s presence, thick and cloying, tried to drown him out like a storm closing in, but he pushed through it, quieting every distraction she created.
Sothing finally began to erge beneath all that interference, soft and distant, also fragile like a heartbeat hidden under layers of wind and shadow but entirely, painfully familiar.
And then—Auren’s eyes snapped open.
A warm pressure touched his lips, gentle at first, but suddenly pressed hard.
Elyndra was kissing him.
His heart seized from shock and sothing sharper, sothing that burned hot in his chest and he jerked back, breaking the contact so abruptly Elyndra stumbled a step forward.
"What—" his voice cracked before he caught himself, anger tightening his jaw as he glared at her, "what the hell are you doing?!"
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